About

The development of this project was funded by the Rural and Co-operatives Secretariat (Government of Canada) and managed in partnership by the Canadian Co-operative Association and the Conseil canadien de la coopération et de la mutualité. The project is now resourced by Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada. This portal was created as the second phase of a project that aims to support co-operative research by: 1) Gathering information from researchers (via survey and panel discussions) that help determine the priority co-operative research areas for future focus and funding; 2) Creating a space to encourage dialogue and collaboration between co-operative researchers; and 3) Establishing a portal of co-operative research for easy access by researchers, the co-operative sector and the public.

There were two papers that were completed in June of 2012 to summarize the survey and consultation findings:

The Steering Committee who directed the development of this Network was comprised of John Anderson (Canadian Co-operative Association), Marie-Joëlle Brassard (Conseil québécois de la coopération et de la mutualité), Denyse Guy (Ontario Co-operative Association), Lou Hammond Ketilson (University of Saskatchewan), André Leclerc (Université de Moncton) along with Fiona Duguid and Anne-Marie McInnis (Rural and Co-operatives Secretariat).

When developing this network, the goals were to create a bilingual, online space that will serve as a central hub for:

co-operative research news, opportunities and events

an inventory of co-op research that can easily navigated and search

a portal for recent conference materials and outputs

a meeting place for researchers to collaborate and determine research priorities

an interactive space where researchers can comment on posts and contribute to discussions

a free, open information source for co-op practitioners and the public

a central site that directs people to other co-op sites, centres, resources and research activities

The Steering Committee and coordinators reviewed other online network models and found the Canadian Rural Research Network (CRRN) had much the same goals as was envisioned for this network, including connecting partners and academic researchers, sharing events and current research, running a volunteer based open site, and having a governance structure that was comprised of a consortium of interested partners. The CRRN generously offered their online template for the use of the CCRN and shared their learning and best practices with the coordinators.

The above goals were addressed through using a WordPress free online platform, having a Google translate function into English/French/Spanish, creating the research citation library on the Zotero platform online, creating options for submitting comments/events/bibliographic information, adding pages for researcher profiles, having a Google events calendar, offering RSS feeds and an email registration for people to receive notices of new material to the website and the site will continue to evolve. These two research networks now have a relationship where they share any new technologies created on their website for free with the other partner and cross refer members where applicable.

Annual General Meetings

Inaugural Meeting – April 16, 2013 – Detail on the meeting available here (including minutes in English and French and the video recording in English)